| ALISTAIR ANDERSON |
Published: 2010/10/06 06:52:12 AM |
THE Black Management Forum's (BMF's) annual general meeting today is likely to be overshadowed by the questions that hang over Jimmy Manyi's future as president of the organisation.
Last week Mr Manyi said he would not step down, despite a call from a group of forum members and former presidents for him to do so. They said he had, in the first year of his three-year leadership position, damaged the organisation's reputation through poor public conduct. If the group is successful, he will be the first BMF president to be removed in the forum's 34-year history.
Mr Manyi told Business Day yesterday that the meeting, which is not open to the public, including the media, would "not be a colourful" one. "It's just going to be a clean-up of constitutional issues. We will take stock of our operations and see how the bad economy has affected them. It is going to be a basic review and I would not expect anything major," he said.
When asked if he would like to place the issue of his position of BMF president on the meeting's agenda, Mr Manyi said agenda items needed to be proposed 21 days before the meeting. For any additional items out of that period to be discussed, a two-thirds majority of the voting members' approval was necessary.
"It is not up to me. The board will have reflected on the issue and they will bring a report on that to the meeting, where the next steps will be decided upon," he said.
But a former president has criticised the move to remove Mr Manyi. Don Mkhwanazi has said the issue should have been dealt with internally. Mr Manyi has also been criticised for poor performance in his other job — that of director-general at the Department of Labour, from which he was suspended in June .
Mr Manyi said the group had not been acting according to the BMF's constitution by not raising the issue with him at the annual meeting.
Last Wednesday — a day before Mr Manyi made his comments — the group sent a letter to the organisation's shareholders, requesting Mr Manyi's resignation. The letter was forwarded to the media at a press conference, attended by three former presidents: Lot Ndlovu, Bheki Sibiya and Nolitha Fakude .
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